Problem:
When I export more than 11 photos, my computer will be slowed down significantly. This might not be a problem, when I export just one folder, but in order to separate photos from an event of different people, I need to start several export processes and also have to wait for them to finish. Additionally, I cannot work on anything else.
I usually have a lot of photos around 20.000 to 60.000 in one catalog. They are distributed/organized in several folder by date and by events. My usual process is to import all my photos, sort them, discard them, edit every photo, export those in different folders. An export of around 1000 photos (32MP) can take around 1/2 hour up to 1 hour easily. I want my computer to work on them, when I don't use it.
I have a decent computer (AMD Threadripper 24 cores, 64GB RAM, NVMe SSD 2T, NVIDIA Geforce RTX 2060 Super), which needs to work on 45MP Photos in RAW.
What I need and probably other users as well:
- I need to queue an export process. By queueing, I mean initiate an export, put it into a queue and immediatly pause it.
- I need to have the ability to queue several exports.
- I need to have the ability to start executing the queue, when I'm done working on all my photos. For example, when I go to bed.
- I need to have the ability to restrict the amount of executed tasks in the queue. On task means sequential processing. More than 1 means parallel processing.
Solution:
Lightroom really needs a Queue Management System! Every Process uses this System and you can configure it with settings like:
- How many Tasks / Processes should run in parallel?
- Which processes are allowed to run in parallel?
- Which processes should run sequentially?
- Which processes should be enqueued on default?
- Is there a timer, which can start all processes in the queue on it's own at a certain time? (For example, the queue gets executed at midnight)
- You should be able to move processes in front or in the back!
- You should be able to priorities tasks (CPU power)
- You should be able to priorities tasks (order in the queue)
- When Lightroom shuts down, the queue has to have a backup! Therefore, you can resume every task after a crash or a needed shutdown after an update or a general restart!
- Every process should be pausable, resumable, cancelable or restartable!
- There should be a history of all tasks executed!
- Every Task should be editable (Editing the list a file been exported, deleted, converted, etc.)
I probably could go on for the features, but this is really basic stuff and this was already implemented in many programs handeling files. Lightroom isn't any different, but it really is unpleasent, when working with it when files are touched!